W

e love Easter: brightly painted eggs, hot cross buns, heaps of chocolate, and the blossomy return of spring. You can’t go wrong with Easter-egg hunts among sunny daffodils and bouncy new-born animals after all.

Here is a selection of the best things to do in England this Easter...

Discover Beatrix Potter

The Magic of Beatrix Potter at Tatton Park in Cheshire celebrates Beatrix Potter with an enchanting exhibition of family events and activities. At Easter Potter's characters will be popping up across the Park. Activities include fun trails, story telling, and puppet and magic shows. There is also the Easter crafts and country shopping fair to enjoy. 

Meet the animals on a wildlife weekend

There’s an abundance of cute in England at this time of year, from new-born lambs, bunnies and chicks to seals, squirrels and other animals not quite new born, but cute nevertheless. Head to Goodwin Sands and the Stour Estuary in Kent to see colonies of playful seals.

At Pets Corner in Suffolk you can meet rabbits, goats, guinea pigs, sheep and mice. Kielder and the Border Forests in Northumberland are a great area to see otters and red squirrels in beautiful springtime countryside spotted with wildflowers, fresh blossoms and a variety of tweeting, spruced-up birds.

Make your own Easter egg in a chocolate workshop

Everyone goes crazy over chocolate at Easter, so it’s the best time to learn how to make your own. Then you can shower you friends and family with the fruits of your labours, (or pile up an enormous horde to see you through to next spring). All kinds of chocolate courses and cookery workshops are on offer to teach people how to make their own Easter treats.

Chocolart in Surrey runs a number of family-friendly chocolate workshops, so you can take the kids along too. And, yes, you can lick the spoon.

Bottle-feed lambs on a farm stay

To get right to the heart of the Easter experience, you can’t do better than a weekend away at a farm. Wake up on the fresh spring morning, surrounded by countryside, wildflowers and fields full of lambs enjoying the sunshine. A number of farms offer special springtime experiences, such as Down at the Farm in County Durham, where you can bottle-feed lambs and meet newly hatched chicks.

Cheshire Farm Stay offers all sorts of farmhouses and cottages on both working and historic farms, so you can enjoy a little of the good life and some traditional Easter country breakfasts to boot. Tulleys Farm in Crawley holds all kinds of exciting Easter activities, from egg hunts and duck racing to trampolining and the quad barrel train ride.

Hunt for Easter eggs in a stately home

If Easter is all about the choccy eggs for you, then you’ll be glad to know there are loads of fantastic hunts going on across England this spring. A large number of National Trust properties are working with Cadbury to provide exciting Easter-egg trails in sumptuous country houses and stately homes.

You can pluck eggs from bushes beside Tudor mansions or in the shadow of Georgian grandeur: just the thing to get the kids’ imaginations racing. You’ll also find face painters, sack races, egg shies and family fun at certain properties, so plenty of fun to fill a whole day or more.

Kew Gardens is also leaping into action for Easter with arts and crafts, family days and of course, plenty of chocolate. The Easter Egg Hunt itself is on Sunday 8 April, but there are also chocolate trails where you can learn more about where chocolate comes from.  Don’t forget, this is Kew Gardens in all its springtime glory, so you’ll also be treated to one of England’s most spectacular displays of dazzling spring flowers.